


long live the car crash hearts

by reystarkrogers



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 02:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17235644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reystarkrogers/pseuds/reystarkrogers
Summary: Clint likes Bucky’s face, even the resting murder one, but Clint tries not to think about that too much.Alternately: 5 times Bucky and Clint were friends and one time they were more.





	long live the car crash hearts

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fluffy, indulgent tower fic, written to fill the request for "anything cute. Go wild guys." Hope you enjoy!  
>    
> Title taken from Thriller by Fall Out Boy.

**1.**

The engines of the quinjet buzz loudly in Clint’s hearing aids as the wheels settle on the landing pad at the top of Stark--sorry, Avengers--Tower. Clint winces and stands to stretch, muscles aching dully as he picks up his duffel bag and slings it over his shoulder.

Clint still forgets sometimes that Tony changed the tower’s name after the team moved in. It didn’t happen all at once, but one by one like the stray cats that Bucky likes so much, the team turned up on Tony’s doorstep a few months after the Battle of New York. Even though Clint and Iron Man had fought side by side and Clint had a kind of awed respect for Stark after the wormhole incident, he hadn’t really expected to hit it off with the guy as friends.

Clint had been totally caught off guard one night when Tony, wild-eyed and with coffee stains on his Pink Floyd t-shirt, devoid of all his usual brass and bluster, padded up the stairs from the lab with a sparkling new pair of Stark Tech hearing aids cradled in his palm.

Clint’s not proud of it, but from his spot nestled in one of the plush chairs in the common area, he’d taken one look at the new aids and almost cried. They were purple, for one. And in the short time since the havoc wreaked by Loki in the city and in Clint’s own mind, Clint still couldn’t manage to trust himself completely even on his best days.

Being Hawkeye sucks sometimes.

So as he slipped the aids in and looked up to meet Stark’s look of layered pride and hope, Clint had been overwhelmed by the obvious gesture of trust and friendship.

Ever since then, _Stark_ had become _Tony_ and over the course of months living together in the tower, Clint had slowly begun to form similar bonds with his other teammates.

Clint still harbors more warm fuzzies than he’d like to admit from watching Natasha adjust to life with the team. Clint’s always considered Nat to be his platonic ride-or-die soulmate, but she’s always had razor-sharp icy edges that catch when other people get too close.

Clint’s expectations of Nat’s capacity for additional friendships were shattered the time Nat zapped a HYDRA thug pretty hard during a skirmish in a back alley just as Thor landed nearby to witness it. As soon as the HYDRA agents were taken into SHIELD custody and the team arrived back at the tower, Thor demanded that Natasha show him all of her electrical pulse weapons and was so in awe of what he called “lightning bracelets” that Nat had gone all soft over it and adopted Thor as some kind of pseudo-son. (Or nephew, Clint thinks, as Natasha reads more as a vodka aunt.) Clint had blamed the resulting warmth in his chest on the curry Bruce made them for lunch.

Clint reserves a special place in his heart for Bruce, who makes Clint tea and watches _The Office_ with him when they’re both up with nightmares, Clint’s tinged with blue and Bruce’s with green. The tea sometimes tastes like flowers and sometimes tastes like twigs, which Bruce tells Clint is good for him. Clint doesn’t know enough to argue the point (Bruce is a doctor, after all) and chooses to sip quietly and focus on the warmth of the cup in his hands.

Clint equally adores the Big Guy, who lets Clint ride on his shoulders and shoot things when he inevitably falls (or jumps) from rooftops and finds himself caught up in the arms of his favorite green rage monster.

Even Steve, who still doesn’t officially endorse Clint’s shoulder-riding antics, has softened around the edges since the Battle of New York. Clint liked Steve from the beginning because he gave Clint a chance to fight with the team and set things to right with Loki even when SHIELD hadn’t cleared him for active duty yet. In the months after the battle, Steve had defended Clint with every breath he took inside SHIELD until Clint was finally cleared and the occasional nightmare or panic attack were the last residual effects from the mind control. Steve still helps Clint manage those, too, and Clint is more grateful than he can express.

Once he moved into the tower, Clint was pleasantly surprised to find that Steve Rogers, the Good Captain himself, is also a little shit who plays pranks and trolls his teammates on the regular. Steve got put through the ringer soon after Clint made this delightful discovery, though. Almost as soon as Clint felt like his head was on mostly straight and the team had just made movie night a thing, they got a lead on a HYDRA remnant in Siberia and came face-to-metal fist with the Winter Soldier, legendary ghost assassin, and, as fate would have it, none other than Steve Rogers’ childhood best friend Bucky Barnes, brainwashed almost beyond recognition by HYDRA.

After they captured Barnes, Tony set up a temporary reinforced room for him in the basement with as many amenities as he could manage and Steve spent countless weeks physically and verbally wrestling with the former assassin until he was deprogrammed enough to move onto Steve’s floor in the tower. He wasn’t fully back to the cocky, smirking Sergeant Barnes that Clint had seen footage of at SHIELD, and maybe he never would be, but over the course of the following months, Barnes managed to pull himself back into a complete person again, even beginning to crack jokes and torment Steve.

That’s when Clint and Bucky became fast friends. Bucky had wanted to escape Steve’s concerned looks at the time and Clint couldn’t help but befriend him because Bucky’s re-emerging cheerful recklessness made him an instant target for Clint’s friendly affections. It didn’t hurt that Bucky had been a top-ranking sniper back in his army days and Clint was always itching for some competition. Clint’s still hanging on to his title of World’s Greatest Marksman, but Bucky regularly gives him a run for his money. In fact, their constant one-upsmanship at the range and then on missions after Bucky was added to the Avengers’ roster wiped the gloom right off Steve’s face, much to the relief of the whole team.

Clint’s still surprised by how quickly he and Bucky fell into a deeper friendship than Clint had with anyone other than Natasha.

Also, Clint likes Bucky’s face, even the resting murder one, but Clint tries not to think about that too much.

That’s why, when the door opens at the back of the quinjet to let them down onto the rooftop, Clint isn’t shocked when Bucky comes up beside him and bumps Clint’s shoulder with his own. Clint turns and runs his eyes over Bucky’s slightly slumping shoulders and dark circles under his eyes. He’s smiling, though, so Clint grins back and lets himself feel the clean kind of tired that comes after a successful mission. Bucky slings an arm around Clint’s shoulders companionably and they walk down the ramp onto the rooftop.

Nat passes by on Clint’s right and smirks at the pair of them, obviously making a beeline for a shower.

“Sniper boys,” she says without prelude or explanation, but Clint thinks she looks fond, so he allows it.

Bucky removes his arm from Clint’s shoulders (Clint instantly misses the weight and warmth) to follow Nat through the access door and begin his and Clint’s increasingly common post-mission routine: head to Clint’s floor, shower, order take-out, and fall asleep under a pile of blankets watching a movie. It’s become comfortable and familiar.

They’re sniper boys, Clint thinks as he follows Bucky down into the top floors of Avengers Tower.

Friends.

 

**2.**

“I hope you’re not planning on wearing those socks on the mat, Barton.”

Clint glances up from carefully wrapping his hands to see Bucky striding through the doors of the gym, barefoot and clad in low-slung sweatpants and black tank top. He brushes a strand of hair escaping from his bun behind his ear and meets Clint’s gaze with a smirk.

Clint looks down at his admittedly threadbare purple socks, which, yes, would theoretically be too slippery to properly spar in. He pulls the socks off one by one and tosses them at Bucky’s head.

“I would’ve remembered,” Clint says, narrowing his eyes but still tracking Bucky’s movements as he catches both socks without looking. Asshole.

Bucky just rolls his eyes before padding up to the edge of the mat and making a show of stretching his arms.

Clint swallows and focuses on wrapping his hands even more tightly.

Clint used to be proud of his hand-to-hand combat ability as a senior SHIELD agent. That was until he moved in with a ragtag crew of supersoldiers and superhumans and regular but specially skilled humans, or whatever the hell they all classed as these days.

When it comes to combat training, Clint’s used to sparring with Natasha, who kicks his ass just as often as he kicks hers. But when Nat got called off on a series of solo missions recently, Clint had needed a stand-in for his training sessions.

Clint had tried out Tony, another squishy human with a lot less combat training, at first. Even though Tony can throw a mean punch and is deceptively agile (the suits are _heavy_ and have made Tony strong and fast), Clint quickly found that Tony’s weakness is his legs, which from then on made him way too easy to take down. Steve didn’t prove to be a challenge at all because he pulled his supersoldier punches so much that Clint lost interest.

Bruce refuses to spar on principle, Thor is off-world more often than not, and Sam and Rhodey may as well be off-world with their  _real jobs_ at the VA and Air Force respectively, so Clint ends up training with Bucky. This happens with increasing frequency as the friendship between them grows, even when Natasha is actually home. Bucky doesn’t hold back like Steve does and Clint likes the banter thing they’ve got going between them.

Which isn’t a problem, until it is.

Clint’s problem on this particular morning is that he can’t help but notice how _attractive_ Bucky is. Clint knew this objectively the first time he was on the receiving end of Bucky’s trademark Winter Murder Stare, but for whatever reason, this time Clint’s a bit distracted by the clear blue of his eyes, the stubble on his chin, the curve of his thighs.

None of this is coming as a shock to Clint (it’s just _more,_  somehow), but it’s mighty inconvenient at the moment because Bucky is his _friend_ and they’re about to get really, really handsy for a while. It’s all right to think your sparring partner is attractive, Clint reasons, he’s just got to keep a damn lid on it or Bucky’s bound to laugh right in his face.

Clint can almost hear Natasha laughing at his predicament anyway, which is already more than plenty.

Clint shakes his head, cracks his neck, and gets into position to focus on the task at hand, which is to knock Bucky on his ass.

On the mat, Clint and Bucky circle each other for a few seconds, and then Clint honestly has very little recollection of the events that transpire between being upright and then being laid out with his wrists held above his head in an unyielding metallic grip with Bucky straddling his waist.

“Hnnngh,” Clint says intelligently, squirming under Bucky in vain and belatedly feeling the warmth of blood slowly dripping from his forehead up into his hairline. His hearing aids are present and accounted for, at least.

Clint watches Bucky’s smug, breathless grin quickly dissolve as his eyebrows pull together and he reaches down with his free hand to dab at the cut on Clint’s forehead. Bucky leans down, suddenly _very_ close to Clint’s face, to inspect the injury.

Clint stills and his stomach twists as he feels Bucky’s breath ghost across his cheekbone, his wrists still trapped above his head.

“Gotta get you bandaged up,” Bucky murmurs in the vicinity of Clint’s ear, sending an involuntary shiver down his spine.

Luckily, Bucky seems too preoccupied with the injury to notice Clint’s shiver and the blush steadily creeping down his neck.

Clint’s actually pretty sad about their short-lived sparring session until he finds himself manhandled onto the kitchen counter with Bucky standing between his spread knees, first aid kit open beside them.

“I don’t really think this is all that necessary, Buck,” Clint notes halfheartedly, watching as Bucky bites his bottom lip in concentration as he gently applies another butterfly bandage to the cut on Clint’s forehead.

Bucky snorts and drops his hands to settle on the countertop on either side of Clint’s thighs, his eyes dropping to meet Clint’s. To Clint’s surprise, Bucky makes no move to back away.

“You’re stuck with me, pal,” Bucky says, ruffling Clint’s hair before finally dancing away as Clint swats at him in retaliation. “Plus, I feel kinda responsible.”

Clint rolls his eyes and hops off the counter.

“Wanna watch a movie instead?”

“If you pick another Robin Hood flick, so help me, I’ll kick your ass _again_ \--”

Clint grins as they continue bickering even after settling on the couch in the common area, their legs tangled (“So I can kick you,” Bucky snarks) in a warm mess of blankets.

 

**3.**

“I’m fucking cold.”

Clint glances over to get the full effect of Bucky’s accompanying scowl and can’t help but grin at the sight of Bucky attempting to glare through his binoculars. Even with the murder glare, Bucky’s still handsome as all hell, and Clint is slowly coming to terms with the fact that he’s not going to be able to stop thinking these kinds of things anytime soon.

They’re on a partner mission in a truly decrepit section of the city, holed up on the eighteenth floor of an abandoned building. Clint had managed to scrounge up a couple of rickety metal folding chairs for them to sit in while they complete what is ultimately turning out to be a glorified stakeout. The open windows and gaps in the brick walls are doing nothing to keep out the chill of the middle of the night.

“I don’t know why Fury assigned us when the local LEOs should’ve had no problem with a damn stakeout,” Bucky continues, grumbling mutinously under his breath.

Clint shrugs, watching his own breath puff out in front of him in little clouds. “Local LEOs don’t have any expertise in stolen Chitauri tech.”

Bucky looks up then, and Clint notices the shade of uncertainty in his eyes and the unmistakable tension in the set of his mouth.

Clint feels like an ass because of course Bucky’s having a hard time with the cold. Why wouldn’t he be?

“C’mere,” Clint says, flapping a hand to motion for Bucky to move closer to him.

Bucky looks a little surprised, a little embarrassed, and a little hopeful all at once, like the very idea of Clint knowing what’s actually wrong without being explicitly told is some kind of lightning bolt of revelation. Clint sighs and makes to stand up and physically move Bucky closer, but Bucky scrambles up.

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” Bucky mutters, picking up his chair, so as to not scrape loudly and give away their position, and moving it until it’s about half a foot from Clint’s.

Clint sighs again, scoots their chairs until they’re touching, and beckons for Bucky to sit down. As soon as Bucky sits, Clint wraps an arm around him and drags him closer until their sides are touching in a warm line from knees to shoulders. An involuntary shiver rocks through Bucky’s body, but he’s leaning a little heavily, tucked into Clint’s side, which Clint counts as a win.

As the hours continue to tick by and their stakeout seems more and more likely to be fruitless the closer they get to extraction time, Bucky continues to press into Clint’s warmth. Just as the first rays of dawn turn the sky grey and Clint’s ass has fallen asleep from the unforgiving metal chair, Bucky leans over and headbutts Clint in the shoulder in a demonstration of what Clint can surmise is grateful affection.

Clint keeps his eyes on the street outside as an unmarked SHIELD van appears for extraction and absently pats at Bucky’s face in an effort to indicate just how glad he is to have Bucky there with him as well. Clint feels the shape of Bucky’s grin in response to his touch and is surprised by the warmth that begins to bloom in his chest.

It’s not a bad feeling.

 

**4.**

“Ha-fucking-ha,” Clint says, deadpan, and shoots his next arrow precisely into the center of the star he’s created on the target using the previous five arrows.

He and Bucky are one-upping each other at the range again, which has become the highlight of Clint’s entire existence if he’s being honest.

Bucky just smirks and lifts his rifle into position, staring down the sight before firing six times in quick succession, perfectly mirroring Clint’s artful arrangement on his own target before straightening up and grinning back at Clint.

“I’m just saying,” Bucky continues, tucking his hair behind his ear and picking up seamlessly where he left off, “That if you really wanted to see who’s the better shot objectively, we can’t use our own weapons of choice.”

Clint hums thoughtfully, pulling back into full draw again. He and Bucky have this conversation about once a week but have never made good on the challenge. Clint’s satisfied to win every time they compete with the bow versus the rifle (Clint still won when they switched weapons last week, which he’s still a little smug about even though Bucky pouted and complained about paleolithic weaponry).

Out of the corner of his eye, Clint sees Bucky watching him draw the bow with vested interest, so Clint makes sure to flex a little extra before letting the arrow fly.

Which.

Clint winces internally at himself. Clint may have more insecurities than he knows what to do with on a good day, but his biceps are not one of them, damn it. Plus, whatever _thing_ he’s realized is brewing between him and Bucky is exactly as fun to instigate as it is wildly terrifying (which is to say, _very_ ), and Clint is _so_ sure that Bucky’s been flirting with him lately.

So there’s that.

The next hour Clint and Bucky spend at the range consists of a round of knife throwing--Clint has to admit defeat on that one because the ex-Soldier’s half century of experience and practice somehow barely edges out Clint’s skills learned in the circus--followed by a round with a couple of handguns lifted from Natasha’s locker.

Clint and Bucky have their own handguns, obviously, but it’s so much more fun to take Natasha’s stuff when she’s not there to murder them creatively.

Clint lowers his (Natasha’s) gun and frowns at his target, which is almost perfect. But “almost” doesn’t count for shit in a kill shot, so.

Clint glances over to watch Bucky finish shooting and then scowls at Bucky's target.

“I think you have Nat’s best gun.”

“Fuck’s sake, Barton, quit your whining--”

And at that point, Bucky shoves Clint’s shoulder to make his point, which incites a scuffle that ends abruptly when Bucky confiscates Clint’s handgun and steps back.

Clint continues scowling to hide his growing amusement at having gotten a rise out of Bucky.

“We didn’t finish. Give me back my gun, Barnes.”

Bucky promptly unloads the gun with the air of a complete asshole.

“No. It’s Natasha’s gun anyway, you fuckin’ maniac.”

Clint growls, making a grab for the gun, but ends up with his arm twisted behind him and Bucky crowded up against his back.

Clint sighs heavily, resigned to his fate as he feels heat bloom across his face, spreading quickly down to his collar.

Bucky laughs, a low, rumbly sound in Clint’s ear that he also feels vibrating in Bucky’s chest where it’s pressed up against his back. Clint immediately and desperately tries to ignore any and all physical responses to said laugh in favor of staying upright and not making a complete fool of himself.

Clint feels utterly betrayed when he feels his stomach do a little flip anyway.

“Uncle?” Clint manages weakly, clearing his throat.

Bucky grins, spinning Clint back around and grabbing his shoulders to steady him before--

Before.

Bucky slides the unloaded gun, barrel first, down the front of Clint’s jeans.

What the fuck.

Clint yelps (in a completely dignified manner, just ask JARVIS) and Bucky just grins unapologetically and raises his eyebrows in challenge.

Nope. Clint can’t deal with Bucky and his pretty smirk and near-perfect aim--and fuck, why does he have to be so _handsy_?

Clint stalks off with a muttered excuse about getting water, half-hard and completely at a loss for words.

What the hell, Barnes?

 

**5.**

Clint's pretty damn exhausted from being wound up all day when he heads to bed for the night.

Or morning, actually, Clint notices once he glances at the clock sitting on his cluttered bedside table.

Clint shifts piles of questionable laundry off his bed and flops down, slinging an arm over his face to bury his nose in the crook of his elbow. He lets out a muffled groan.

After his hasty retreat from the range earlier, Clint had decided to try to preoccupy his poor brain by visiting the other Avengers in hopes that they would distract him from The Thing with Bucky.

But Bucky’s a fucking infamous assassin and had apparently decided that it was high time to ruin Clint’s plan of avoiding him for the rest of the day, so naturally, Bucky showed up like a shadow wherever Clint decided to be.

Clint pestered Tony in the lab first, playing fetch with DUM-E and trying to convince Tony to upgrade his quiver again, and then out of nowhere, there was Bucky, oh-so-sweetly bringing Tony a sandwich “from Steve.”

Steve bringing Tony sandwiches was actually a fairly normal occurrence, but Clint knew better about Bucky’s real motives, especially after the faux-innocent grin Bucky directed at Clint as he slunk towards the stairs.

Clint tried visiting Bruce, Sam, and Steve after that (damn Thor and Natasha for being gone again), but each time, Bucky showed up with a reasonable excuse to be there and Clint just couldn’t. Get. Away.

Clint finally threw in the proverbial towel when JARVIS announced that Bruce had made dinner for the team and Bucky sat across the table from Clint, looking more smug than should be legal in the state of New York.

Clint was hyperaware of how their ankles were touching under the table for most of the meal. He was ninety-nine percent sure that Bucky may have been instigating some weird version of stoic assassin footsie with him as they dispatched several plates of Bruce’s homemade pad thai.

Clint pretended not to notice and felt like he was being lit on fire starting with his ankle.

Of course, after dinner Steve pouted until they all said they would hang around to watch _Back to the Future_ with him and Tony, who had made a reference to the movie on a recent mission and insisted that Steve needed to watch the entire trilogy to get the full cinematic effect.

Once in the common area, Clint gravitated to his usual spot on one of the couches, and Bucky settled in right beside him like he always did.

And Clint could suddenly breathe deeply again, because the simple thought that he and Bucky had been sitting together at movie night for so long that they just fell right into it reminded him that even if they were being kinda intense and handsy lately, that didn't change the carefully constructed friendship that he and Bucky had been building for so long.

Clint abruptly felt like a dick for trying to avoid him all afternoon, so he offered a Bucky a small smile and leaned so that their sides pressed together comfortably. Clint was pleased to see a similar smile playing at Bucky’s lips as the movie started.

Bucky was visibly fighting exhaustion by the end of the first movie, so he bid everyone good night and disappeared up to his floor after ruffling Clint’s hair affectionately.

Clint stayed up with the others to finish the next two movies in the trilogy, which is why he’s just now getting to bed at two AM and groaning into his elbow.

Just as Clint reaches up to take out his hearing aids for bed, he hears someone pounding on his door, causing him to jump out of bed swearing, dashing to the door over piles of clothes and flinging it open.

It’s Bucky, all tensed up and looking way more exhausted than before, and Clint’s heart breaks a little.

Clint knows that Bucky still has nightmares more often than anyone would like. He’s run into Bucky in the common area on nights like these fairly often and ends up playing distraction, listening, or talking through the dreams with him, whatever Bucky needs at the time.

Clint has always been able to relate to Bucky a bit better than the others aside from Steve, but this is the first time Bucky has specifically come to Clint’s door for comfort.

It makes Clint’s chest ache, so he takes Bucky’s hand and pulls him inside.

“What do you need most right now?” Clint asks quietly, absently rubbing at Bucky’s arms to warm him.

“Sleep,” Bucky says, leaning into Clint’s touch.

Clint chews on his lip.

“Okay. You take the bed and I’ll take the couch, right here if you need me--”

“No,” Bucky says, shifting from foot to foot, looking unsure of himself. “I need-- I want-- Can you--”

Bucky gestures vaguely between the two of them, and Clint understands. Touch grounded him in reality when he was recovering from Loki, and Clint gets it. Natasha was his person, so maybe he can be Bucky’s and it’ll be a damn pitiful train of pay it forward from here on out.

Clint takes Bucky’s hand again and leads him to the bed. They climb under the covers and Clint settles himself pressed up against Bucky’s back, arm tucked securely around his waist.

Clint’s strangely calm about the whole thing because he’ll be damned if Bucky doesn’t deserve to feel safe and warm and taken care of.

“This okay?” Clint asks the soft skin of Bucky’s neck, just to be sure.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes.

Clint lets his hand drift up to smooth Bucky’s hair back behind his ear, and Bucky makes a little contented noise in the back of his throat at the touch. Clint takes it as invitation to continue petting Bucky’s hair, and as he continues, he feels the tension begin to leach out of Bucky’s neck and shoulders.

“You know, I thought only cats could purr, and I’m more of a dog person, but it’s really fucking cute when you do it,” Clint catches himself rambling to the back of Bucky’s head, sleepiness and darkness making him bold. He's a little shocked that the words made it past his teeth and hazily hopes that Bucky's too far gone to remember it in the morning.

“Fuck off, Clint,” Bucky mumbles, but there’s no heat in it and he already sounds half asleep.

“Sure, Buck,” Clint says, reaching up to slip out his hearing aids, and it’s not long before he drifts off himself, Bucky still tucked warmly into his arms.

 

**+1.**

Steve Rogers is an asshole.

Clint sips his beer mutinously with his back pressed up against the shadowiest wall of the large multipurpose room in the ritzy hotel Tony’s booked for this shindig.

Clint knows fuck-all about why he’s here, why he’s been stuffed into a penguin suit courtesy of his so-called best friend, and why Steve Rogers is an asshole who makes him come to PR things that absolutely suck ass.

Clint’s pretending to be part of the wall, and it’s because he hates everything that’s happening today.

Not because he’s trying not to stare at Bucky.

Bucky, who smiles appropriately but smirks devilishly, looking mouthwateringly gorgeoushandsome _hot_ in his perfectly-fitted suit as he hovers at Steve’s elbow and allows him to hold court with not one, but three members of the media.

Bucky’s a far cry from the Winter Soldier these days and Clint can’t help but feel a little swoop of pride, so he drains his beer and shifts off the wall to get another.

Without warning, Pepper Potts appears silently in Clint’s immediate peripheral, causing him to swear and almost drop his empty bottle. In Clint’s book, Pepper’s in the same class of sneaky, efficient, and competent as Natasha and he’s always liked her by default.

“Enjoying your evening, Clint?” Pepper asks serenely.

Clint rubs the back of his neck.

“Your decorations look nice.”

They are purple, after all.

“Thank you,” Pepper beams, turning to survey the room at large. “How’s Bucky doing?”

Clint balks and wants to be offended, but to be fair, he and Bucky make it no secret that they’re close.

“He seems all right,” Clint says, nodding toward where Bucky’s now sipping punch and murmuring to Bruce, Rhodey, and a couple suits from Stark Resilient.

“You know, Tony says that you like his butt and his fancy hair,” Pepper remarks conversationally, still looking out over the crowd, the smile on her face giving away nothing but complete professionalism.

Clint can’t decide whether he hates Tony or Steve more. Of course Tony would say shit like that to Pepper. Clint feels his face flush immediately and tries to deflect.

“Whose butt? Tony’s?”

The look Pepper gives him expresses exactly how much she believes that Clint is as dumb as he pretends to be.

Clint sighs.

“I mean, who doesn’t like Bucky’s butt and fancy hair?” Clint mutters, scraping the toe of his shoe against the floor.

Pepper hums, smiling beatifically again.

"It's mutual," Pepper says, patting Clint on the arm before melting into the crowd as quietly as she had appeared, leaving Clint alone with his jumble of thoughts before he can panic-ask her about seventy questions.

Clint’s overthinking session is thankfully short lived because Natasha quickly appears where Pepper had been standing and takes Clint’s empty bottle, setting it on a nearby table and taking his hand. She drags him toward the dance floor without so much as a hello.

Clint digs his heels in as soon as he realizes where they’re headed.

“Nat-- You know I hate-- Hey--”

“Hush. I’m playing a hunch.”

So Clint allows her to drag him out among the other swaying couples because, you know. It’s Nat, and he trusts her even when she does weird shit like this.

Natasha discreetly arranges Clint to her liking, and they begin to sway to the music. Clint’s been on enough undercover missions involving high-society soirees like this one that he’s no slouch at dancing when he has to. As they sway, Natasha pulls Clint close, and she’s warm and smells nice and Clint’s just starting to relax and not hate it when Bucky catches his eye over the top of Natasha’s head. There’s heat in his gaze and Clint watches Bucky’s throat as he tips his head back and swallows the rest of his punch.

The song ends, and Clint belatedly realizes that Natasha’s disappeared again and he’s standing alone on the dance floor, staring at Bucky.

Damn it, Romanoff.

Bucky strides toward Clint before he can escape, coming in close and grasping Clint’s elbow.

“Wanna get some air?”

“Yeah,” Clint breathes, going for broke and giving up all pretenses of not staring at Bucky for the rest of the night.

Bucky all but frog marches Clint off the dance floor and out a side door into the deserted courtyard surrounding the covered swimming pool. He doesn’t stop until they’ve made it into a corner with stacks of lawn furniture preventing a direct sightline to the door they came out of.

Clint belatedly realizes with no small amount of trepidation that Bucky’s got him backed up against the white painted fence when he feels the leaves of the vines growing there tickle his ear.

Clint assesses the situation--Bucky’s eyes are dark and he’s standing alarmingly close.

And, come to think of it, Bucky’s definitely staring at Clint’s mouth.

“Are we gonna kiss?” Clint blurts. The blush works its way back up his neck, and it’s so familiar that Clint thinks he might as well just live with it permanently at this point.

Bucky’s eyes flick back up to Clint’s and he seems to realize what he’s done. Clint feels a little better about his life when he sees a matching blush begin to bloom on Bucky’s face. All it does is make his eyes look more blue, though, so Clint’s not sure who’s actually winning here.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” Bucky asks, sounding more unsure of himself than Clint thinks is reasonable, given their history and Bucky’s current state of completely beautiful--which, to be fair, he’s always beautiful, even when he’s in sweats with bedhead, but damn, that suit with that blush just really does it for Clint.

“Um. Yes?” Clint screws up his face and looks at Bucky out of one eye, feeling like he’s about to combust.

Bucky’s eyes widen and he makes an aborted move to step back at Clint’s uncertainty. Clint immediately winces and grabs Bucky’s metal wrist, tugging him back.

“Yes. I mean, yes.”

The corner of Bucky’s mouth curves up and he steps in close, taking Clint’s face in his hands and digging his fingers into the sensitive skin just behind Clint’s jaw, tipping his face up.

Clint forgets how to breathe.

Bucky leans in and presses his lips to Clint’s softly. Clint’s heart almost shatters with the tenderness of it.

“This okay?” Bucky breathes against Clint’s mouth, pulling back a fraction as his tongue darts out to lick his lips.

Clint tracks the movement and nods vigorously, hooking an arm around Bucky’s neck and pulling him down again, firmly pressing their mouths together this time. Bucky’s hands fall to his waist and he hauls Clint up close so they’re pressed together from chest to hips. Clint bites and licks at Bucky’s bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth and drawing a really nice rumbly sound from the back of Bucky’s throat as he buries his hands in Bucky’s hair and tugs. Bucky gives as good as he gets, though, pulling back only to turn his attention to Clint’s neck, sucking and biting at his skin until Clint’s a gasping mess, hanging onto the lapel of Bucky’s suit like it’s the only thing grounding him in reality.

And, of course, at that moment there’s a whooshing, crashing noise followed by a dazzling flash of light and suddenly there’s Thor, standing on a fucking Norse pattern burned into the concrete ten feet from where Clint and Bucky are just beginning to fool around.

Thor grins at them knowingly after they manage to get their hands off each other.

“Friends, I’m so glad to see that you’ve come together at long last,” Thor says, waving a hand at the general disarray that Clint and Bucky have found themselves in.

Clint sighs and regretfully smooths down Bucky’s suit jacket.

“Thanks, pal,” Bucky says to Thor, only looking a little bit sheepish, and then directing a crooked smile at Clint. “I am too.”

Clint feels warm all over.

They end up following Thor back into the party because Bucky expresses a mild concern about being there to defend themselves when Thor inevitably announces their engagement or some shit.

Clint agrees wholeheartedly because he’s been caught off guard more than once by the lengths the god of thunder himself will go to troll his teammates. He’s kind of glad, though, because Thor breaking the news to the team will be far more hilarious to watch than any other way Clint can think of.

Clint grins and takes Bucky’s offered hand, who reels him in for one more searing kiss before leading him back inside. Clint’s heart feels full--he’s got his team, his Bucky, his home in Avengers Tower.

Being Hawkeye has never felt better.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, the butt/fancy hair quote is from Lilo and Stitch. It just slipped out.  
>    
> You can find me on tumblr @bart0nclint. I always want to make friends with winterhawk lovelies. Thank you for reading!


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